Media

A mechanical engineering research team at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) has invented a novel light-controlled, contamination-free fluidic processor, which can serve as a useful tool to greatly reduce the risk of infection of front-line medical workers in testing virus or bacteria in big pandemics like the current COVID-19 pandemic, and to minimise the risk of contamination during the process.

The team innovatively uses light as a stimulating force, allowing contactless manipulations in moving, merging, dispensing and splitting liquids, on a specifically designed photo-responsive platform. The platform is non-toxic and non-sticky to all fluids, making it an ideal contamination-free fluidic processor.

The new technology has great potential in advanced research and applications in DNA analysis, proteomics, cell assay and clinical diagnosis, chemical synthesis and drug discovery. The team hopes to further integrate the platform with artificial intelligence (AI) system to work out a fully automatic system for liquid processing.

The new technology has been published in Science Advances.

In a Zoom media conference tomorrow (December 8, Tuesday), research team members Chair Professor Liqiu Wang, graduate student Mr Wei Li, and postdoctoral researcher Dr Xin Tang at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, will introduce the new technology and demonstrate how the light-controlled platform operates. A short video will be shown on how the device functions as a “magic” wetting-proof hand to navigate, fuse, pinch, and cleave fluids on demand.

Details of the Zoom media conference as follows:
Date: December 8, 2020 (Tuesday)
Time: 11am (HK Time)
Zoom ID:  https://hku.zoom.us/j/92557814909

Media enquiries:
Ms Celia Lee, Faculty of Engineering, HKU (Tel: 3917 8519/9653 1040; Email: leecelia@hku.hk) or
Mr Heng Cheng, Faculty of Engineering, HKU (Tel: 3917 1924; Email: hengc@hku.hk)